The Land Registration Bill Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

The Land Registration Bill - Essay Example One significant step towards achieving the mirror principle, a step which is particularly welcome, has been the phasing out or complete removal of a number of overriding interests by the 2002 Act. This is because the 2002 Act envisages that the majority of interests in land will only be capable of being created when simultaneously registered. However, admitting to there being overriding interests undermines the ‘mirror principle’. These un-registrable rights, deemed so important that they do not require registration and which have to date been given statutory protection, dilutes the fundamental objective on which the 2002 Act is based. Lord Denning in Strand Securities v. Caswell spoke of the purpose of the overriding interest in Section 70(1)(g) of the Land Registration Act, 1925 (the â€Å"1925 Act†) as being to â€Å"protect the person in actual occupation of land from having his rights lost in the welter of registration†. He further stated that such a p erson may â€Å"simply stay there and do nothing† but will nonetheless be protected. The 1925 Act listed out the ‘old law’ overriding interests in Section 70(1). Section 70(1) consisted of a number of lettered paragraphs. Many of the types of interest listed in Section 70(1) were unimportant; in practice there were five important categories of overriding interest. â€Å"The guiding principle on which it [the Bill] proceeds is that interests should be overriding only where it is unreasonable to expect them to be protected on the Register.†